[STARGATE screens Saturday April 2 at 7 and 9:30 p.m. at the CWRU Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium]
Review by Charles Cassady Jr.
If you'd told me when STARGATE premiered in 1994 that it was going to be the cornerstone of a successful science-fiction franchise, I probably wouldn't have believed it, any more than I thought Battlestar Galactica would have an illustrious second life. To me, STARGATE was a nice try - a gangbusters first half of a really fun escapist fantasy that just didn't pay off. Obviously I'm not a good fortuneteller of the future (could've used a few stern warnings about my own), but I'll cling with my tattered, 20-year-old opinion here, take it or leave it.
Important thing to know, at least for me at the time, is that this was the big Hollywood entree for the filmmaking-writing team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, two guys who had previously done most of their work in West Germany, cranking out, no, not angsty cut-your-wrists Rainer Werner Fassbinder film-festival melodramas but imitation Tinseltown Lucas-Spielberg sci-fi kitsch, like MOON 44, done with ever-escalating budget and polish. I always thought of these guys as the ultimate fanboy backyard-filmmakers, but with real 35mm and backlots to play around on. When they came to the US the sheer joy of their finding their element - here and in the subsequent INDEPENDENCE DAY and the much-disliked GODZILLA remake - is almost enough to compensate for their chronic-fanboy mentality and material of the level of Perry Rhodan or pulp magazines of the 1930s.
